Kentucky Archive Guidelines



All county archivists must read and agree to abide by the USGenWeb Archives Guidelines.


Ky Archives Mail List

  • The mail list for the KY Archives has been established. All archivists need to be subscribed.

    Both mail mode and digest is available.

    KYARC-L [regular email] and KYARC-D [digest mode]

  • TO SUBSCRIBE:

    Send your email to:
    KYARC-L-request@rootsweb.com [for regular email]
    or:
    KYARC-D-request@rootsweb.com [for digest mode]

    In the body of the email put the word: subscribe

    Do not put anything else in the body of the email, including your name. Be sure to turn off your signature file if you have one.

  • TO UNSUBSCRIBE:

    Send your email to: KYARC-L-request@rootsweb.com [for regular email]or:
    KYARC-D-request@rootsweb.com [for digest mode]

    In the body of the email put the word: unsubscribe

    Do not put anything else in the body of the email, including your name.Be sure to turn off your signature file if you have one.

    If you are receiving your mail in DIGEST mode, you must unsub from the-D[IGEST] list.

  • TO POST A MESSAGE TO THE LIST:

    Send an email to: KYARC-L@rootsweb.com

    Messages posted to this address will appear on both KYARC-L and KYARC-D

    • Obtaining Passwords

  • To obtain a password you must be an archivist or be volunteering to take over one of the "archivist needed" counties. Send an email to Sherri Hall your name and main email address (no forwarding email addresses) so I can send the password to you. The TOC page shows who the archivist for the county is, and will indicate those counties that need an archivist. If anyone has someone they want to have shown as an assistant just let me know. If you are interested in the county pages (not the archive pages) then please send an email to Nancy .

    Table of Contents Pages

  • Table of Contents pages exist for each of the Kentucky counties. Your job as the archivist for the county is to prepare and upload those files you receive for your county into the ftp side of the archives and maintain the TOC page on the html side. The URL for all the directories is:

    http://www.usgwarchives.net/ky/countyname/countyname.html

  • For consistency in the Kentucky archives, the TOC page should retain the basic current format showing the county map, the Archives logo and the graphic at the bottom. You should remove my name and email link at the bottom and add yours.

  • When the current TOC page begins to get full, or if you have a large number of files of one type, for instance obituaries or wills, you might want to duplicate the TOC page for just those files, putting a link to the new TOC page on the main county TOC page.

    Source of Files

  • Many files for the archives are being posted on the ky-footsteps mail list.

  • You should subscribe to this list so you can monitor it for files that belong to your county.

  • Beginning around 7-1-97, Nancy asked everyone posting their info to the list to use a subject line format that identifies the type of file being submitted, and the county it belongs to.

  • If someone sends you a file directly, if it isn't too large I hope you will post it on ky-footsteps.

    Multiple counties in a file

  • If a file is posted for one county and it mentions your county as well, you may either point to it in the other county directory on your TOC page or you may put it in your directory. Space and bandwidth is not a problem at this time, but I would suggest that you just link to it in the other county. It seems rather pointless to me that one file be located in more than 1 county directory, but this is up to you and however you want to handle it is ok. If you are not the archivist for the other county that the file also points to, email them to let them know you have the file out there and the address for them to link to for it.

  • Duplicating files into several county directories will multiply the amount of *hits* received by the researcher when using the search engine.

    File Format

  • I am assuming (I know... that's dangerous) that you have already visited the Archives guidelines page listed above and know that the files all need to have the .txt. I have been naming the files that pertain to one individual or one surname using soundex... m500-001.txt, m500-002.txt etc.

    I would like to see this naming pattern continued across the Ky Archives files. You'll find an online soundex generator here if you need it. If you want to put the files up as both .txt and .html that is ok too... just remember that only the ftp side gets searched and that html files are not allowed on the ftp side. Also remember that gedcom files are not allowed.

  • One other thing that I might mention here that you might all consider when formatting your .txt files. In testing the search engine, Nancy ran a query on the surname TRICE (of course) :-) The search returned a list of all of the files where she was listed as submitter in the file, even tho the name was not mentioned in the actual file. This is going to be a problem later.

    She had been showing the following on the files:
    File submitted by: Nancy Trice, trice@usroots.com

    Now she is going to show it as:
    File submitted by: Nancy T r i c e, kygenweb@usroots.com

    so her surname doesn't return a *hit*. If you have any files for yourcounties that have Nancy's name on them, please change it to the above. You might want to consider this also when adding your own name.

    USGenWeb Notice on Files

  • Months ago the archives had a problem develop when someone went in and did a mass download of hundreds of files from the archives, and placed them on his site. It is our position in the archives that the files being placed there belong to the person who submitted them and not to us as the county archivists, or to the archives project, and we defend this position with vigor when necessary. The person mentioned above ended up removing the files and closing his site, and I think almost lost his university job as a result of what he did.

    Some time ago we began adding a notice to the files which all of you have undoubtedly seen. This notice has changed wording several times over the past few months and I have not been able to get back into all the files to update them yet, and in fact some of the files don't even have it yet. I would appreciate it if you can all check the files and add the notice when you have time to work on them. There is no urgency about it tho.

  • One other thing... the search engine shows a "Headline" or a "Header" when it returns a list of the files it finds, and the "Headline/Header" is the first line of the file. Some put the gwnotice below the "Headline/Header" and below the submitter information and some put it at the very bottom of the file. Just as long as it is on every file is all that really matters.

    The notice to add to the files is:

    USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing freegenealogical information on the Internet, data may be freely used forpersonal research and by non-commercial entities as long as this messageremains on all copied material. These electronic pages may not be reproduced in any format or presentation by other organizations or persons.Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for profit or any form of presentation, must obtain the written consent of the file submitter, or his legal representative and then contact the listed USGENWEB archivist with proof of this consent.

    Archive URLs

  • The URL for the county html side of the Ky Archives is:
    http://www.usgwarchives.net/ky/countyname/toc.html
    or http://www.usgwarchives.net/ky/countyname/countyname.html

  • The URL for the ftp side is:
    http://files.usgwarchives.net/ky/countyname/filename.txt

  • The county names are all spelled out in full (I hope) on both html and ftp side and the main html pages are all named toc.html or countyname.html

    Links to non-archive files

  • Links to files not in the archives belong on county pages and not the archives page. The ONLY files being linked on any of the pages are those files that are in the archives. The only exception to that at this time is a pointer to the state page, and now a link to your county page. If you know of a file in another state archive directory that refers to someone in your county feel free to link to it. We don't have to worry too much about broken links in the archives since when a file goes in it normally stays. We can also put a link to the USGenWeb projects, such as the Tombstone and Census Projects.

    Archive Graphics

  • I have a graphic directory for common graphics on the html side at:
    http://www.usgwarchives.net/ky/gifs/

    If you have a graphic you want added to the directory let me know, or you can establish your own graphic directory.

    Backups

  • PLEASE be sure to make a backup of all of your files in case they are ever needed. Also, if you ever give up the county archive page, the backup files should be sent to either the new county archivist or to me.

    Helpful Sites

  • You might find this site helpful.
  • Tips For Text File Presentation
  • Sample toc page & sample text file
  • Copyright Myths
  • The Copyright Information Guide
  • US Government Copyright Basics Circular
  • More Copyright Questions (click on Let's Go)

    • Please bookmark this page for future reference.





    • KY Table of Contents
    maintained by
    Tom Hembrey
    Coordinator / File Manager, KYGenWeb Archives

    Suzanne Shephard
    Assistant Coordinator / File Manager, KYGenWeb Archives

    Return to
    KyGenWeb Archives Table of Contents
    USGenWeb Archives Table of Contents
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    This page was originally created by Nancy Trice, KyGenWeb State Coordinator
    USGenWeb Kentucky Archives Project
    Copyright © 1998-present. All rights reserved.